Friday, 10 September, 2010


Surface hygiene test wins the Chemical Industry Innovation Award

Thursday, 29 April, 2010

Orion DiagnosticaOrion Clean Card ® PRO is a surface hygiene monitoring breakthrough developed in collaboration between Orion Diagnostica and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
Orion Diagnostica and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have won the Chemical Industry Innovation Award 2010 with their surface hygiene monitoring innovation Orion Clean Card® PRO. The award-winning innovation is a new kind of chemical test for the assessment and monitoring of surface hygiene, which is manufactured by roll-to-roll printing method. The monitored surface is simply moistened and wiped with the test card. A colour change indicates immediately if the surface is not sufficiently clean and protein residues remain on the surface.

The innovation successfully combines chemical expertise with various materials and advanced printing technology. The competition jury, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Chemical Industry, emphasised the multidisciplinary nature of the innovation, and the productive collaboration between the corporate and research sectors.

The surface hygiene test is a breakthrough for Finnish functional printing technology. Orion Clean Card ® PRO is the first commercial product resulting from years of research and development in the field.

Surface hygiene is a major food safety and healthcare challenge all over the word, so a wide range of applications have been envisioned for the Finnish innovation. Food hygiene requirements are becoming more stringent all over the world. Food safety regulations both at EU and national level require food processing organisations to carry out self-monitoring and surface hygiene verification. Another developing area is hospitals, where hygiene standards undergo constant development. In Finland alone, some 50,000 hospital infections have been estimated to occur every year.

The winning innovation was chosen by the Scientific Advisory Board of the Chemical Industry, and the award was presented at an event hosted by the Chemical Industry Federation on April 27th 2010. The Chemical Industry Innovation Award is a biennial award which aims to recognise outstanding achievement, with industrial-scale applications. The award sum totaled 20 000 euros and it was awarded for the 11th time this year.

www.chemind.fi

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